Pics or it didn't happen.
>I didnt because HN comment boxes are not vehicles of long essays. (...) Far too much effort to spend on a crowd whose faith in pg's intellectual status is based on his money-making ability.
So, it isn't backtracking if you pre-emptively declare that you are backtracking. Right.
>It isnt "backtracking" to criticize a person for one thing while you are doing another. Jon Stewart criticizes news programs whilst his program isnt a very good news program. Fortunately he's in the comedy business.
Unfortunately the similarity doesn't hold, because Jon Stewart doesn't also say "I can do a much better news program than them", whereas you did said that you could write a respectable "5k word essay on this very small point" (and then didn't).
>Equally, my off-hand comment isnt a very good essay but fortunately I didnt post it to an Essays section of a website and then go and read it to a conference audience
As if the section of website where something is published matters one iota. It's not like having an essays section necessitates that you only put George Steiner quality material in it. Heck, Zed Shaw has an essays section on his website.
Also, you keep mentioning this conference audience a lot -- Sounds like sour grapes to me.
As if Defcon is some elite philosophical conference, and Paul Graham failed to keep to the level of previous speakers, like Plato or Heidegger.
You have to put what im saying in the context of how his work is read (as some kind of obviously briliant religious text).
It isnt "backtracking" to criticize a person for one thing while you are doing another. Jon Stewart criticizes news programs whilst his program isnt a very good news program. Fortunately he's in the comedy business.
Equally, my off-hand comment isnt a very good essay but fortunately I didnt post it to an Essays section of a website and then go and read it to a conference audience.
Absolutely not the case; here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6987798, the relevant comment that sparked this discussion), you are simply taking the conversation into new territory and insulting people.
> But jesus,
>> pg's response is actually priceless: it is like a soft-spoken witness upending a bullying lawyer who had just viciously attacked him, leaving the attacker reeling for all to see.
>What's with the almost cult-like reverence for this largely pseudo-intellectual entrepreneur?
> Why would you do that?
I'm responding to the questions raised in the most convenient way. I'm not going to give a serious critique of the many essays which require it to make a small point about his blase approach to serious academic topics. Far too much effort to spend on a crowd whose faith in pg's intellectual status is based on his money-making ability.